The Battle at Baylor University

by Wayne Jackson

Baylor University in Waco, Texas, with its more than thirteen thousand students, is the largest educational institution in the world affiliated with the Baptist Church. This major center of academic learning professes a commitment to “excellence in Christian higher education.” The university promotes itself as an organism “dedicated to Christian principles.” The school’s motto is Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana (For Church, For Texas)—presumably in that order!

Currently, however, the Baylor campus has become a bitter battlefield; there is a heated war being waged between certain faculty personnel and the school administration.

According to an article that appeared recently in the widely read Baptist Standard (May 15, 2000), the conflict is over the formation of a new study center on campus that has as its goal the investigation of whether certain “mathematical and scientific formulas can prove intelligent design behind creation.”

Some faculty members at Baylor, especially from various science departments, are up in arms. They feel that such an endeavor will bring the university’s science program into academic disrepute.

One of the men in the “eye” of this storm is William Dembski, who in 1999 authored a book titled Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology. Dembski is viewed by some as one of the country’s foremost authorities on intelligent design.

But some at Baylor are fearful that this sounds too much like creation science—which to them is an embarrassing, backwoods sort of philosophy. The concept known as creation science, which views the first two chapters of Genesis literally, asserts that the entire universe was created by God in a span of six solar days.

Of course this is the view clearly indicated in Genesis 1, such being further confirmed by Exodus 20:11. This concept is wholly at variance with Darwinism and the various mongrel theories that have been concocted to accommodate, to one degree or another, that anti-biblical system.

In mid-April, Baylor’s faculty senate, by an overwhelming majority (27-2), voted to dissolve the new study center. These folks apparently have no interest in any possible evidence for a designed universe (cf. Romans 1:20). Though university president Robert Sloan vowed that he would not yield to these faculty protests, he did, nonetheless, register his own objection to creation science: “I think [creation science] is not good theology, and I would be embarrassed for what I understand to be creation science to be taught at Baylor University.”

That being the case, it is obvious that Dr. Sloan would be embarrassed to have Jesus Christ teach at Baylor, for the Savior clearly taught what has come to be known as creation science. The Lord declared: “Have you not read, that he who made them from the beginning [of the creation – Mark 10:6] made them male and female?” (Matthew 19:4). Note the following:

The Lord endorsed the written record of Genesis when he said, “Have you not read . . .”

Christ negated the notion of an accidental origin for the universe when he referred to “the creation”—which implies a creator.

He repudiated the evolutionary scenario when he announced that the first humans were made male and female. He did not endorse the notion that an asexual blob of some sort ultimately developed sexuality.

Jesus contradicted evolutionary chronology when he affirmed that the human family existed from “the beginning of the creation,” rather than sanctioning the common notion that the universe is some twenty billion years old, while humanity is a mere “Johnny-come-lately,” having evolved approximately three million years ago.

Baylor University is but another casualty in the long line of religious institutions that have been highjacked by those who have abandoned the most fundamental elements of biblical faith. It is an old and tragic—yet oft repeated—development. This is the real embarrassment in the world of religious education!